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Seriously, how is Michael going to attain immortality with no sense of doing good deeds?
Replace the words “attain immortality” with, say, “buy a car” “read a book” “wake up in the morning” or “learn tennis”. The answer is, very easily, if he understands the process.
In the days of Shakyamuni or Lao Tzu people didn’t suffer the lack of integration between the body and the mind that they suffer today. They also didn’t have distractions and neurosis like people do today. So it was easy to forget the body and work in the mind realm.
That isn’t so. In the days of Lao Tzu things were just as bad as today, if not worse. That’s what gave him the insights needed to write the Daodejing. If everything had been peachy, nothing would have been written. 😉
It depends on how you do it. In most cases, the jing isn’t given, it is scammed.
Fox spirit is to hungry ghost as hustler is to bum. 🙂
Here’s a story. 🙂
A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal.
The Zen Master returned and found him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away.
The Master sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
Thanks Blackhawk,
for offering everyone an excellent example of religous hatemail. It doesn’t really merit an answer, but I feel sorry for your having to carry so much negativity. So I hope my reply will diffuse some of your anger. Religious hate mail is typically filled with toxic anger projected upon anyone who doesn’t abide by the insider code of that religious group.
Your post is filled with judgements and character defamations. They perhaps suggest you feel some need to hide behind your deity and group to project your merit. I am sure you are a perfectly nice person and don’t need to invoke them to reveal your virtue.
Its unfortunate you were offended by my repeating observations made by another well regarded scholar and psycho-historian about the link between Buddha experiencing his mother’s death during his birth and his belief that life is about suffering. If I joined a religion, I would find it interesting to know the origins of its philosophy. To pretend this is an insult to your Lord Buddha is simply religious narrow mindedness. If you were detached, you wouldn’t take it so personally. I didn’t take your teacher’s absurd comments about the orbit personally – why should you take my reply that way?
Your distortions of my criticisms of Mantak Chia will undoubtedly earn you demerits in some imaginary Buddhist hell realm – if honesty is the criterion for merit. My criticisms voiced in that kan and li retreat I had made directly to Chia previously, and are posted on my articles page under the article: Clearing the Confusion about Fusion. I welcome everyone to read them. I appreciate your highlighting the issue, Blackhawk.
Chia began teaching the tibetan buddhist powa technique of shooting a pearl out the crown, and its excessive use was having serious negative effect on some students. The method is meant to eject the adept’s refined jing if confronted with sudden death, and is not a taoist alchemical method. My critique was aimed at the safety of my students – a truth I hold higher than subservience to any teacher. People who lie to save face for the guru’s and teachers do everyone a disservice. Spiritual science is my mission, not to promote “group think” or “follow the leader”. Its why I don’t accept titles or folowers.
And thanks for your gratuitous judgement about my finances, it was mildly amusing to hear a stranger making such pronoucements. If I was “ultimately about greed”, I wouldn’t have waited 18 years before I decide to sell my first training tape, or written Mantak’s books for free. I wouldn’t have even gone into the business of transformation through inner alchemy and qigong – as its not a business, mainly a labor of love.
I welcome you to post on this site, Blackhawk, but next time please remember there is NOT a war going on between Buddhists of your sect and adepts of the Tao. Its just a debate. So we can all enjoy the diversity of ideas and experiences. If you really feel angry and burdened by something I did or said, you are welcome to call me and let it out directly. My phone number is on my asheville page/teaching schedule.
So please, next time open your lovely heart a little wider and consider your words more carefully. I’m sure Lord Buddha will smile more deeply upon this merit.
Michael
Why would you want immortality? I know high goals help everyone, but just leading a happy and meaningfull life is a big goal for anyone, whether it be 100 or 30 years.
Maybe I’m missing the context, as I don’t even really consider myself adequate in any form of meditation. However, saying you want immortality of body is the same to me as saying you are afraid of death.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no claim to Mr. Winn or anything about the community other than I’m interested in schooling my mind to a calm. I have kept an open mind and approached many religions, philosophies, and medical sources with equal fairness. It would be my opinion that your point could have been made with far more elegance than it actually held.
I apologize if this reply is out of context or insulting. Neither was my goal. I am interested in your side of the story, however, I would find it easier to understand and accept if it wasn’t decorated with mud.
Sincerely,
Jason
P.S.
There is always more than one way to accomplish something on a computer. Whether your hacking at something you don’t know or going through the motions of a pro in his own system.Plato,
if you are going to make public pronouncements about your study of “winn alchemy” I guess its my job to keep your honest. You took only one course with me, and were obviously ill-prepared to take it – you had a very weak foundation coming into the Lesser Kan & Li and had deep issues that you admitted at the tiime prevented you from doing the practice. You were so distracted, you felt like a total misfit in the class and you wanted to leave the course halfway through it.It was clear to me that you never really got the practice – if you had succeeded, you would have formed something real in your neutral space and not attracted fox spirits. On the last trip to Huashan a young guy, with less background than you – stayed in the same cave you were in and had a powerful enlightenment experience and developed a deep relationship with the lone taoist monk living nearby. The fox spirits don’t live in the cave plato – they live wherever they are attracted.
There is no need to project your personal mismatch with taoist inner alchemy as a generalization tha has public truth.. The experience of many others contradicts you. Who are you to declare that other’s peoples experience is “false”?
This is just an arrogant and absurd old repeat ofsectarian buddhist propaganda, similar to their false proclamations that Taoists only work on the level of the body and Buddhists are working in a higher spiritual realm.
The truth is that everyone is working on the same issues from different perspectives, and each seeker should choose the method that works best for them. I’ve left behind other paths, and I’m grateful for what I got from them.
But I would never tell everyone that path is worthless – only that I got all I could personally get from it and have moved on.nuchael
“Karma as a control mechanism for peasants? Religion is a control mechanism. Karma just is.”
Plato,
This sounds like some kind of new age pronouncement: Karma just is.
We are talking about theories of reincarnation here, not inviolate ontological truth. Where does the idea of reincarnation come from?The reality is that it was adopted rather late into the Hindu tradition, it is not present in the earlier Upanishads. The Buddhists of course borrowed it from their Hindu “parent” religion and were really big on the transmigration of souls from animal to human (or back again) if you are bad. Something may appear to be true – to be “just is” – just because a lot of people believed it for a long time.
Karma is a hindu word that simply means “action”. Karma yoga was a path of taking right action – but just one of many possible paths. Karma does not mean “destiny” as new agers have twisted it to mean.
But the question of what “causes” our actions or the actions of the world upon us is of great interest to everyone, including me. IUnderstanding destiny is in fact the main benefit I have found from practicing inner alchemy. The higher levels of inner alchemy practice have removed the vaguely defined “cloud of inevitability”, of karma being some inviolable law that humans can never quite understand – or,out of fear, that causes us to behave according to the dictates of the local cultural-religous “good”, in the hope that we have wiped clean our dirty slate.
The taoists define two different types of destiny. One is your destiny in the physical world, short term, embodied, later heaven. The other is your simultaneous destiny in the spiritual planes, long term, beyond body, early heaven.
The dynamic between the two is too complex to go into here, but suffice it to say that the model for dealing with “karma” in the seven alchemical formulas is focused first and foremost on one’s spiritual destiny. This involves taking virtuous actions in the subtle planes – that simultaneously reinforces the unfoldment of your virtue in completing your temporary physical destiny.
The actions (or karmic forces in new age speak) of the cosmos are multi-layered, and each formula dissolves one layer of “karma” or action: emotion, sexuall, ancestral, planetary/astrological/ stellar-spiritual, inter-dimensional. I find it virtually impossible- and useless – to deal intelligently with the whole thing lumped together under one simple explanation like “bad deeds”. But that’s me – I want to know the practical details.
🙂 Michael>You know how to tell the difference? When your karma comes and bites you >in the ass, that’s how. As the lifetimes go by it will start to sink >in. 😉
thank you for agreeing with me. many of the good deeds we do are really bad deeds. or we’re just playing a game of “i’m only tryig to help you” (see eric berne’s ‘games people play’) which means we’re not really interested in doing good deeds, only in trading negative emotions, which is a bad deed. likewise many things we think to be bad deeds, would’ve been good deeds had we done them.
now if yo think of karma merely as cause and effect, then yes, many of the bad good deeds we do will cme back to bite us in teh ass. and many of the actual bad deeds we do will come around and bite us. but not all. peopel with a lot of power and control, even (or especially) black adepts, can usually avoid the consequences. so can clever crooks.
so when “karma” bites us, it’s already too late. the whole point is that on a very deep, conscious level, we dont knwo good deeds from bad deeds. and we sit around waiting to get bit or not get bit. i’ll add to that that we dont know the difference between sympathy and compassion either. henced the confusion ver good deeds and bad deeds–we end up serving other peoples negative thought forms and emotions out of sympathy, thus increasing disharmony and negativity by doing bad deeds we think are good deeds.
my experience is that virtually al the good deeds i have done were more or less unconscious at the time, though perhaps often “inspired”. i’ve often “suffered” the marvelous consequences of such deeds and always been grateful for them. why? because i didnt deserve any payback. i was just doing waht seemed natural and right at the time. no payback is forthcoming for what is natural, but it’s nice when it does.
to expect payback, or darma as it were, is greedy. not for the things of the flesh but for the things of the spirit. greedy for salvation. and salvation doesnt come tht way. whether your greed is for money or spirit, your true inner nature remains trapped by it, the greed. so its counterproductive to spiritual growth. hence, “merit” done for the sake of earning darma, is not rewarded. not due to some cosmic mechanism, but because you continue to keep yourself trapped by your own greed.
that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.
sorry to go on so long. i just wanted to add that when we get bit in the ass for our “good deeds” the world does seem unjust. but it gives us a great excuse to play another bernes game–“poor me.” which is more trading in negative emotions and more bad deeds. and so yes, at the deepest levels, people dont know the difference between good deeds and bad deeds and the world remains unjust and full of suffering. for those people.
i doubt there is anyone on this list that knows the difference, and that includes you, myself, and michael winn. Ghandi didnt know. jesus and buddha might know. but i also think there are several people on this list who are working on understanding the difference.
Hi Michael,
I am very honored and thankful that you take the time to write the response. My lovely heart really felt compassion that you see hate in my post which was not my well intended message. Any way, whatever you see is in your mind. If your mind is deluded, you see hate otherwise you would have seen love and compassion from me.
Your opinion on Buddha using scholars to support your point is too naive. A man with your so claimed spiritual attainment should be able to tune in to the Truth of Buddhas teaching with your insight wisdom or with your energy as you did when the recent tsunami struck Asia instead of relying on the intellectual minds of the scholars. Your understanding and knowledge of Buddhism is pathetically shallow and not even kindergarten level. I would suggest that you do yourself a favor and do some good reading on this subject before you embarrass yourself further.
BTW, thanks again for your open hearted offer to come back here and post. Unfortunately, I dont have the time to do that as I may some residual negative emotions accumulated from my previous practice with the Healing Tao formulas and needs to find a cure elsewhere.
I will be happy to go to hell as long as my message is understood by those whose eyes are not too clouded by the smoke screen of the kan and li cauldron.
With metta to all
Black Hawk
Thanks Blackhawk,
I appreciate the shift in tone.
I can understand why you dislike my ideas on Buddhism as a religion, even though I’ve barely begun to explain them.
These views of course, are very different than my feelings about Buddhists as people and as practitioners. And of course there are so many kinds of Buddhists and kinds of Buddhism it doesn’t make sense to generalize.
The problem is not that I know too little about Buddhism as organized religion – I know too much. For example, I spent many weeks on Tibetan buddhist retreats and I loved the devotion and committment I found amongst many of the lamas.
But I saw clearly how the monks were trapped in an antiquated hierarchical power structure of religious authority. And for all the concentrated focus on compassion, there is a HUGE dark side with manipulations in the astral and sexual invasions of practitioners that is not being talked about because it is politically incorrect. So the numbing use of words like compassion and good deeds means little to me when I can see the underbelly of the projection – and know some of its victims.
Of course there is a very high level of spiritual science – similar to Taoist alchemy – hidden amongst the priest hood, that is being used to generate real power, and much of it used for “good”. But I consider the religious structure (some call it a religious mafia) guarding this science to be a dinosaur. It has too many centuries of baggage that will never be cleaned up – so it has to die for its inner jewels to be reborn.
Of course when Tibetan buddhism entered China during the Tang Dynasty,
the chinese almost completely reinvented it. That is what happens to every religion when it crosses a cultural boundary line – its called appropriation by scholars. I much prefer the softened, more feminine version of Buddhism – Chan (zen in Japan) that emerged. And I hope that you are part of the group that is reinventing American zen.
Just so you know that I’m impartial on this topic, i think the forms of temple Taoism that have held on in China are also antiquated and will die. Mostly because sects like Complete Perfection abosrbed Buddhist asceticism in the 14th century and remain too male dominated and anti-body to survive the current upsurge of the female fire. The founder of Complete Perfection spent two years living in a grave dug in the ground to prove his detachment from life…….And about clearing those clouds from your old kan and li cauldron……
the steam in the cauldron eventually transmutes itself into pure light. And ifyou LISTEN to that light, you’ll catch the sound current. That is the fastest and truest steed in the cosmos, the only one able to cross the Great Ocean of Emptiness….. You won’t be able to remember what troubled you.
🙂
peace,
MichaelHi Michael,
Once again thanks for your time and lengthy response with a similar shift in the tone.
It is most unfortunate that you choose to read exclusively and study exclusively with doubtful schools emphasizing development of immortality through the skanda of form instead of acquiring insight wisdoms of the mind. Your choice of using Tibetan Buddhism as example is again misleading the uninformed public. What you said about Tibetan Buddhism is generally true as I personally dont believe in following a religion organization or guru worshipping nor do I agree with their way of practice using the skanda of form. The same goes with the Chan and Zen school which again you chose to refer as these schools are already corrupted with Taoism when they entered China.
I would suggest that you do yourself a good favor and get hold of a good copy of the translated Pali Cannon and read it from cover to cover a few times. Hopefully, you will be awakened to the wisdom of Buddha and save yourself further embarrassment by making silly remarks on Buddhism. Also hopefully, you will see that Buddhism is not a religion but a precious and proven alchemical cultivation method for what you have been trying to achieve through a doubtful and unproven method dreamt up by Chia and adopted by you and have caused psychological and physical damage to many of the followers as I can see complaining on another forum Taobums.
Most cultivators using form as a vehicle are easily side tracked in the course of their cultivation because of the pleasurable attachment to bodily sensations and bliss which you seem to have sadly fallen into. This is the opinion that I have drawn by reading your writings and listening to your talks and lectures.
I am not asking you to change to Buddhism as you have your free choice. I only hope that my last post here will help those people whose eyes have not been blinded by steamed yet to be more informed when they decided to get serious with a spiritual path.
Once again, I thank you for your time and allowing my post to stay.
With metta to all,
Black hawk
Hmmm, quite the interesting joust gentleman. Winner? Well, not sure. Knowledge gained +++++ and that is awesome.
In truth looking at both Buddhism and Taoism on a universal scale … and I do not claim to know a lot of either of those religions. In fact I do not claim to know a lot of any religion. However I am very strongly spiritual. And I believe that the universe can take you to where your heart needs to go if you so desire without the full practise of either. The trick to me, the essence is to give great respect to those prophets of past such a Mohammad, Buddha, and the great Jesus, and there are many, many more that I won’t even get into. They were great people who attained great enlightenment/ascension. And the thing I think that you two gentleman miss here (well I know you don’t miss it in your entirety, but what is missing in the text in this forum – I think the both of you have this knowing and more which just cannot be put in words here and maybe not anywhere because it is an “understanding” and that is also the trick, if we can not explain or project to others all that we mean to say in its wholeness and entirety what makes everyone think that the ones who wrote the “BOOKS” hundred of years ago could or did) and really, ascension, we are quite capable of doing the same, as long as we don’t get hung up on who knows more, what religion is “right”, which foot goes before the other and which cheek we sit on when we eat, what way our bed lies when we sleep. Let your primordial knowing take you to where YOU need to go. These prophets lived hundreds of years ago and they were very wise and provided us with such rich understandings and they do have a good place in our hearts and their teachings, some are just so fantastic. HOwever before them we lived within the universe and earth with a knowing of that every second of our being. And that is where we belong. So beautiful to pay respect to the ones who worked so hard for our race, but really, lets not get hung up on what religion has done to us for many hundreds of years. Control. Ego. Who is right? Domination. Fear. Hatred. Anger. What I take for myself is mine. What I hear and see in the writings of ancients is for me. What you take is for you. Genetic coding is different. But yet we are all connected. The knowledge is to be shared enmass. For everyone to use all of it. Not just segments, not just this one piece of knowledge from Buddhism or Taoism. There have been many, many great humans on this planet and some of them have never heard of Buddhism or Taoism. The debate is great, kept on that plane as long as one remembers that in essence that is all it is. You are debating on past. Remember … that is past. This is now. Change is always and then yet we run back to written human religious laws of many hundreds of years ago that have never been changed …. for what? For security. Because to go forth and develop ourselves can sometimes be fearful and difficult. We are always wanting to cling. My opinion … one must be secure in who YOU are. Not what Buddha was nor what Lao Tze was. Does that all matter? Doesn’t just giving two humans, two maybe immortals, or two ascendeds the honour they deserve enough. Sure there are mudras and mantras that give us the mathematical equations to help us ascend but they were given to us to share with EVERYONE. Not just Buddhists or Taoists. See, this is where the big mistake was made. That is why, like Michael said things are just so outdated now. Because so much was held back. And so much skued to the receiver’s interpretation and intent. There are a lot of Buddhist and other religious practitioners who are now opening to other religions and accepting them, such as the Native Indian Traditions, etc., etc. Look at them closely, you can see their similarities. And it is these similarities which hold the truth. And it is with these that we are to work with. As a whole. Keeping our different flavours and honouring those but joining in unison, all to one heart. Different flavours are so much fun. I mean just vanilla ice cream would be so boring, although it is my favourite, but every now and then a taste of bubblegum ice cream is good. People digging at the past is great because there are always things we missed as long as they share it. to claim it for one religiion or one power. Not right way.
And you know as far as qigong practices screwing up people. I can see that happening because qigong can bring out the latent side of people, hidden karma, and illusion that has sat with us for ages. And because when practising qigong the student is not always told of these things, but rather these “secrets” are kept hidden. The student goes in innocent and then gets hit with a ton of bricks. Of course there is going to be unbalance and a whole lot more.It is not the qigong that CREATES the problem so much, but rather the qigong which releases it. And the problem then I think is that people do not “see” it for what it is. And then the proper qigong techniques are not practised to correctly further oneself. There is a medical qigong text that has many stable processes in it that the medical qigong doctors use in China. Gerry Alan Johnson wrote it and it is fantastic. It is avaialble online. There must be balance in all that we practise. We are not just sexual beings, we are not just spiritual beings, … we are mind, body, spirit, soul beings. I truly do not think that wanking at ones weiner and massaging your balls every day is all that great for you if you don’t balance it with reality, with physical, with emotional, with mind. And I think that is what happens sometimes to a lot of qigong practitioners. They forget the balance part. I am not what you would call a “specific”, that knows this equation and that equation or this cycle of practise or that cycle of practise. I guess I am what you call a global learner or student. I accept what the universe gives me to practise. Just listen to the purest message. So clear. The universe will give you what it takes, what you require to ascend. Just that we are sometimes too busy wanking ourself or hanging weights on our gonads, or sitting in a dark room for 9 days to notice that maybe that is not what we require right now. Maybe that is not what WE require. Maybe it is what someone else does require though and that is what can be tricky. our Ego gets in the way I think sometimes and we do not remember Acceptance and non-judgement.For me … well, people who teach others are human. And sometimes teachers miss things and sometimes things don’t go the right way. But the student learns, the teacher learns… maybe the second time round it will work out right. Maybe the screwed up student needs to do something else for awhile, maybe they need to learn not to follow blindly and open their OWN eyes and understanding.
Really you know for people to progress properly in qigong I was told neigong first, medical and then spiritual. I think this is correct way. Then with the medical knowledge when you screw up with something you know how to correct it. I have just been very fortunate to meet some very awesome people who helped me when I went from neigong to spiritual in o-3 seconds.
Michael has a wealth of knowledge and so does Blackhawk and so many others on this forum. I honour all of you for that. I do not know so much. I only know my heart. And it is so nice to see you debate like this, I just hope that you do not stop. Sometimes when we learn to dance with each other there is a lot of stepping on toes. That is okay. So much okay. The dance that follows is well worth it.
This debate is just so awesome!
You might want to try breaking up your paragraphs a bit more. It makes your post near impossible to read when it’s a huge chunk like your first paragraph.
And if it’s not easy to read, no one is going to pay too much attention on a fast moving board like this.
And it might help organize your thoughts as well.
Just use the return key to put a line or two between thoughts. Or between every few sentences.
Like this.
See?
It’s of course up to you, but it would help readers like me a whole lot.
> You might want to try breaking up your paragraphs a bit more. It makes your post near impossible to read when it’s a huge chunk like your first paragraph. >
Yup.
Once the text got to onebigblob, i just skipped it.Thank you for that post. About the whether it’s merit with self-interest or not. I never thought about it that way.
I personally have caught myself doing good for someone else just to see a smile of appretiation… that in and of itself could be considered self-interest.
When you think about it that way, it’s kind of hard to find a time in which doing something good for someone (merit) could ever be for anything other than self-interest.
Thanks again for the observation!
-Jason
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